Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Just a quick entry for today. We left our palatial Phnom Penh hotel at 8:30 this morning, picke dup y a minibus to take us to the central bus station. We jumped on a public bus there which was to take us all the way to HO Chi Minh City (HCMC or Saigon). It was an OK bus, we had reserved but cramped seats and a loo on the bus which is always a bonus. It took about two and a half hours to get to the border control of the two countries and was easy enough all-in-all. We'd already given our passports, departure cards, and arrival cards to the bus guide and he did the hard work for us. We jumped off the bus at the Cambodian departure point, answered our names, then jumped on the bus again. A quick drive through no-man's land and off the bus again. We had to take our luggage this time and it was a major struggle for me. It's not that I packed loads of stuff I don't need, but somehow that bloody backpack is getting worse and worse even though I buy nothing. I swear the stuff's breeding in there! Anyway, the breeding backpack and my camera pack are cumbersome so I lugged it all over and waited for my name to be called to go through passport control. I was the last. Then I had to struggle out of the gear again to get it scanned. Much more serious than getting into Thailand or Cambodia. Drag the gear back to the bus, get it loaded on, then another three hours or so into HCMC.
I can't say I'm falling in love with Vietnam yet, not the way I looked at Cambodia and wanted to live there, but maybe it's the rain. It was overcast and grey driving in to HCMC and if I thought that Phnom Penh was manic, I was so wrong. It's truly scary mental stuff crossing the roads here. I dashed out to try to change some dollars when I got here and I got soaked to the skin within about a minute. The rain here is torrential, it's cold, it's wet and I'm not loving it yet at all. Still, I guess I'm just tired and will be OK once I've had a sleep.
Later I meet someone for dinner so it'll be a nicer introduction to the city than wandering around on my own in the rain. I had rough plans for tomorrow but if this rain continues, and I've been told that it will, I don't fancy trailing around on my own, not much chance of the great photo ops if it's pissing down.
